1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of management software, and more specifically, to project management.
2. Description of Related Art
Project management is becoming more and more complex. In enterprise applications, the sizes of projects are typically quite large, including complex databases and involving a large number of participants. The complex interactions among the various team members, process flows, tools, and databases have created difficulties to project managers. The project manager has to keep track of the progress of the project, communicate with stake holders, during the initiation, planning, executing, controlling, and closing phases of a project. Team members have to use the tools of the trade, exchange ideas, generate and review project documentations and/or reports, update information, communicate with the project manager regarding progress of their work, etc.
Existing techniques for project management have a number of drawbacks. First, most traditional techniques are not convenient to users or team members because of lack of support and/or interface to Web-based information sharing. Second, the project information may not be well structured or organized. Users do not have a common format or platform to organize data or information and trace sources of data and information. Third, workflow/process automation is non-existent.
As the project progresses, status of tasks or phases of the project changes such as task completion, specification changes, checklist completion, etc. Communication of these changes, has to be done in a timely manner. Project team members therefore need to be informed or notified of these events as soon as possible so that they can manage their part of the workflow/process accordingly. Existing techniques are either manual in nature, relying on individual inquiries to the system or lack the desired level of automation. These techniques are slow, tedious, error-prone, and inefficient.